Retirement of the Clerk of the House

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to rise to support the motion and add my voice to those who have already expressed appreciation for the dedicated and superb service that Sir Robert has given over so many years. His knowledge of the House, its procedures, its tradition, its history, is without peer, whether as an author of both amusing and serious volumes, or in the advice that he has given from the Table or to us privately. If I may just mention one small personal example, we now regularly debate on a substantive and amendable motion our finances and financial plan. It was an idea that was conceived by the Finance and Services Committee, but we could not find a procedural way of doing it. It was Sir Robert who found the way through, and therefore has, through his advice, enabled a valuable tool to come to the House’s management that we would not otherwise have had.

Others have paid tribute to his skill in the procedural areas and I wanted rather to record my appreciation for his work as Chair of the Management Board and leader of the House service and Accounting Officer, a less seen but none the less vital part of what he has done. This has been a quite extraordinary Parliament for innovation and change. There has been a wellspring of renewal that has come from a number of sources. It has come from ourselves through the Wright report, it is has come from the Chair, through the Chair of the Commission and other areas, and it has come from the House service.

Let us consider what is now happening in Parliament: the election of Select Committee members and Chairs; the revitalised opportunities for scrutiny; the new rules of governance in the House service, which many Members might not be aware of; the savings programme and its successor, continuous improvement; the diversity challenge; and the education and outreach programmes. Any one of those taken on its own would be a substantive management challenge, but taken together they represent a comprehensive management challenge that has required leadership demonstrating integrity, skill and competence. That is precisely what we have had from the Clerk.

I have had the opportunity to observe at first hand, at meetings of the Commission and of the Audit Commission of the House and at staff gatherings, how Sir Robert has sought to lead by example and from the front, but using a collegiate and collaborative style. He offers both challenge and support. He has been open to new ideas and has sought to mesh those new ideas with tradition and innovation, to give the best to the House service. He is the diversity champion on the Management Board, and as such he sought to widen access to the House service. He said at the last Commission meeting that he was particularly proud of the fact that all the apprentices in the scheme had found full-time work in the House service.

It is not easy to change a culture or to adapt to new ways, just as it is not easy to adapt to stricter financial times. Similarly, it is always a challenge to keep the customers happy, and if there is a bunch of customers who are more difficult to keep happy than us, I don’t know who they are. Sir Robert has managed to do all those things with singular success. He has led a transformation in the governance and financial management of the House service, which has moved from what could be described as an era of gifted amateurism to one of thoroughly competent professionalism. That is no mean feat, and I add my thanks to those of other Members for all that he has done. I wish his wife and family the very best in his retirement.